If your spouse “comes at you” to resolve the difficult conversation you’ve been having, this article may help you understand why they do what they do. After this article, you can look at Helpful Skills: Square Breathing, and Going Slow To Go Fast for next steps.
What Things May Look Like For You
OK. So you may be at a place where you just want some breathing room. You know that a difficult conversation is going to happen because you can see your spouse give you a “look” that lets you know you’re in trouble. But you also feel like taking space from the conversation is helpful because you’ve seen both of you able to calm down after some time. It may be days before you can talk again, but it happens, and all through the magic of time.
In addition, you may be an introvert, who likes to process things, reach a conclusion, then say what you’ve concluded. Now your spouse or partner is asking you how you feel about something and it’s blowing your mind because up until 15 minutes ago, your mind wasn’t anywhere near that line of thinking. So what gives? What’s up with their heads?
This happens a lot in couples. In heterosexual couples, 80-85% of couples have a dynamic where one person pursues these difficult conversations to reduce distress and the other person distances to reduce distress. There is no crime in this - there are just 2 different styles of conflict resolution where the main goal of both people is actually to reduce distress. The problem is, as one person uses their “go-to” strategy, it creates a distress in the other, causing them to amplify the use of their “go-to” strategy. As the interaction energetically ping pongs between two people, it eventually explodes in a big fight, or shutdown or one of you physically leaving.
What it looks like for your pursuer spouse.
Understand that your spouse isn’t pursuing you simply because “they want to be right.” This can be a component of the conflict, but it isn’t likely to be the majority of where the distress comes for them. They are pursuing you because you have an intimate attachment bond to them. You are important to them like no one else is. Let me say this a different way: Your partner is pursuing resolution of your difficult conversation because they love you so much and find it distressing to have your connection threatened in your difficult conversations.
Let’s take a multi-media break. Let’s watch how fundamental this attachment is to human existence. Watch at least the first 3 minutes and 40 seconds of this video on attachment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6czxW4R9w2g
From Their Eyes.
When pursuers come to me, they often see the silence in their spouse and think,”They either can’t understand me or don’t care.” Both are scary scenarios to them. For your spouse to think that you somehow don’t care about them feels heartbreaking to them. It’s a special kind of aloneness because you’re the one person that they were counting on to “sit in the mud” with them. Instead, when you’re silent, or you retreat, they are sitting in the mud and seeing you stand over them and refuse to acknowledge that there is mud.
The other difficult thing for your partner to contemplate is that you can’t understand them. That somehow you have a physiological inability to understand their pain. This means that they have to contemplate life without a basic need they have in a partner. It sets up a feeling of scarcity in their lives when marriage probably promised them abundance. This scarcity stokes fear that they are actually going to be alone forever because of this perceived inability for you to understand them.
Their Reaction
Once the fear of you not caring or able to care sets in, a behavior emerges in your spouse. It can be different for different people. Ask yourself which behavior that you see. Do they yell? Do they start questioning? Do they start talking about the relationship with hopelessness? Do they start gesturing or pointing? This reaction is the last step in a process that started with them feeling threatened.
From here, there are some common mistakes you can make if your spouse is a pursuer. You can just throw up your hands and leave, which creates a strong feeling of abandonment in your spouse. You can apologize profusely and without specificity, which can create a sense that you just want to end the conversation. You can try to convince them that they’re wrong, which creates a sense of invalidation. You can get super quiet, which may leave them feeling like you’ve thrown a wall up.
How To Cope
So what to do? I work with couples to slow things way down when there’s an argument. What both of you need in these moments is time to calm your systems. But while it’s tempting to ask for a time-out, there is a risk that your spouse will feel like this is you trying to get out of a difficult conversation. The trick is to talk about this in advance of any argument, when both of you have cooler heads. Then discussing how you want to communicate a pause in the conversation. This is akin to a safeword. Then you want to agree on a time to check in to see if both people can handle a conversation calmly. This is a check-in, not a commitment to finish the argument. So here it is in bullet format:
Talk when you’re not fighting about how you want to setup language that both people can respect to pause the conversation.
When you’re pausing, agree to a time when you’ll check-in to see if both people are ready to continue a calm conversation.
Then actually check in. This is the most important part - you’re making a commitment which will possibly win you some reprieve in your fighting. Make sure you follow up on that commitment. If you don’t, it may backfire!
These principles come from a modality called EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples). If you need help, I recommend finding a therapist that uses EFT to help couples in their fighting cycle. If you want to find out more of my thoughts on marriage counseling, stop by my marriage counseling page. If you’re in the Western Twin Cities area of Minnesota, I’d love to see how I can help. Call me at 612-230-7171. Email me using my web form. Or click on the button below to book a 15-minute appointment.